Brief History and Background of Aikido

Aikido was founded and developed by Japanese Morihei Ueshiba during the 1920’s/30’s. He named his martial arts ‘Aikido’ in 1942, which essentially means the ‘The Way of Harmony of the Spirit’ or ‘Way of Combining Forces’. Morihei introduced a very spiritual and ethnical approach to his art.

It was introduced to the rest of the world in the early 50’s and quickly spread with dojo’s popping up in many countries.

Of course there are variations and hybrids of the original Aikido arts and several different organisations. Each one of these different variations have their own interpretation on which area’s to concentrate on. The Largest and original organisation is the ‘AikiAiki Foundation’, which is still run by the Ueshiba family and emphasis very much the old traditional values, but even this has variances from teacher to teacher. Some of the other organisations include, the International School of Traditional Aikido (ISTA) and Aikido Schools of Ueshiba (ASU). Aikido uses many techniques from Jiu-Jitsu as well as Morihei’s own ideas.

Aikido Training

A practitioner of Aikido is known as an ‘Aikidoka’.

Aikido is designed to redirect your attackers energy and momentum with throws and joint locks, while trying to minimise injury to your attacker.

Training is concentrated on physical fitness, conditioning, flexibility, endurance, mental strength, relaxation and confidence and of course technique. The techniques used include: throws, joint locks, some strikes (usually limited to using the hands), grabs, multiple attack training and even weapons training.

Practise of the techniques usually rely on a partner either attacking or defending and of course the emphasis for Aikido will be the practising of your defence using your attackers own energy/body against them.

Aikido Equipment/Gear Used

Aikido Gi (A Full Standard Gi)
Keokogi (Jacket)
Hakama (Flared Bottoms)
Various Belts (For some organisations)

Weapons used in Aikido

Jo Staff – The Jo Staff is a wooden pole and usually around 1″ thick and 50″-56″ in length. The Jo is mainly used in Aikido in a circular motion to blend attacks.

Bokken – Which means wooden sword (wood = bok and sword = ken). This training weapon was introduced to help train Japanese warriors and Samurai in a safe manner.

Tanto – The tanto is single edged Japanese short sword that measures under 12″ and was popular with the Samurai for close quarter fighting, as it could be used to penetrate body armour.

Celebrity Aikido Practitioners

Steven Seagal
Sean Connery
Toshiki Kaifu (Japanese Prime Minister)

Movies featuring mainly Aikido

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